Nokia Lumia 710 First Impression

Nokia Philippines gave me a chance to get my hands on one of the prototypes of its second Windows Phone handset a couple of days ago and this phone is none other than the Nokia Lumia 710. Basically, the Lumia 710 falls in the entry-level category of Nokia’s current Windows Phone lineup – the Nokia Lumia 800 being on mid-range and the Lumia 900 as the most high-end WP. And considering the unit I tried was indeed a prototype, I didn’t explore everything yet on the software side but rather just on its external build.

The Nokia Lumia 710 shares the same 3.7-inch display built on Lumia 800 and though it’s not AMOLED, the Finnish phone maker designed the handset with scratch protection in mind using Corning’s popular Gorilla Glass, coupled with Nokia’s own ClearBlack technology.

Unlike the Nokia 800 that features soft touch buttons in the frontage, the Lumia 710 has a small button bar that houses keys for Home, Search, and Back. Each corner was designed with curve accent, and so the rear portion with tapered edges. The 5MP camera is at the top-center of the back panel with the LED flash positioned just right of it. The power button, together with the microUSB and 3.5mm audio ports are all located at the top, while the right side of the handset features the volume rocker and camera shutter button.

Like the Lumia 800 and Lumia 900, the Lumia 710 also supports micro-SIM card which you can access by removing the back cover, just beneath the replaceable battery (I wasn’t able to open the cover of the prototype unit though).

As to the internals, the Lumia 710 actually got almost similar specs and features as with the Lumia 800; except that the latter really excels in terms of internal storage (16GB vs. 8GB; both not expandable through microSD), display (AMOLED vs. TFT), camera (8MP with dual-LED flash vs. 5MP with single LED Flash), and of course the battery (1450mAh vs. 1300mAh).